Thursday, August 2, 2007

We've always been told that the Kensington borders run from Caton to Coney Island to Ditmas to McDonald. We heard from local veteran, and Shenanigan's bar keep, Chuck that the west border is really 36th St. Then there was the case of CT. Muffin setting up shop on Cortelyou posting Kensington as the new location. (Cortelyou is clearly Ditmas Park). Then we had people arguing about the fact that most people package all of it as Flatbush. (Kensington has been listed in the Brooklyn Eagle since the 20s). Now we're trying to decipher who to include in our neighbors blog roll... We want to be fair but also don't want anyone to get a false impression of who lives here. If you live in DP we're not listing you... If you live on Ft. Hamilton and E5th its only one block up so we're cool with that. Now comes a new blog (Brooklyn Stories) listing itself as Kensington and since the location is past Coney Island Ave (near Parade Grounds) we paused. South of Parade Grounds is known as Prospect Park South, right? At Ocean Ave starts PLG. Anyway, we got this response.

Kenneth Jackson's book titled, "The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn," (2004) designates that PPS starts at Church, rather than Caton, and was the name for the district of Victorian homes behind us with its own zip code. Moreover the book indicates that Flatbush began about two blocks East of the Caton/Stratford intersection. The 2-3 blocks on Caton Avenue, east of CIA, according to that book, not a part of anything in particular; however those blocks were assigned to the Kensington post office and given the zip of 11218. Thus, we think of ourselves as part of Kensington.

Who can argue with that? We certainly didn't read a book only picked up some 1920s maps once at Strand. What to do people? What to do?